I didn’t know anything about Frank Ocean until I started looking at all of the Best Albums of 2012 lists. He was on everyone’s list and was pretty near the top of all of them. So it was time to check him out.

It turns out that he’s affiliated with the Odd Future collective, whom I’ve talked about in the past. But he’s also been on a lot of big name records. Channel Orange is his debut album (that’s not a mixtape) and the big surprise seems to be that this song (which he sang live on Jimmy Fallon) is about a male lover. And I guess that’s progress.

So Ocean sings a slow R&B style, and I have to say his voice reminds me of Prince a lot. Which is a good thing. I really like this song. It has gospelly keyboards (but in that Purple Rain kinda way). And a really aching vocal line. It’s really effective and it’s really simple. And I think that’s what I liked best about this song and others that I’ve heard–he’s really understated. Crazy, I know.

Now I do not like R&B, it’s one of the few genres that I just don;t get. And yet there’s something about this album (the tracks I’ve listened to) that is really compelling. It’s not awash in over the top R&B trappings, and it doesn’t try too hard. It’s just Frank (not his real name) and his voice over some simple beats. A friend of mine recently said that all of a sudden she “got” this album, and I think I may have to get it as well.

[READ: December 30, 2012] McSweeney’s #12

At the beginning of 2012, I said I’d read all of my old McSweeney’s issues this year. I didn’t. Indeed, I put it off for quite a while for no especial reason. Now as the year draws to an end, I’m annoyed that I didn’t read them all, but it’s not like I read nothing. Nevertheless, I managed to read a few in the last month and am delighted that I finished this one just under the wire. For those keeping track, the only issues left are 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 10, 38, (which I misplaced but have found again) and 42, which just arrived today. My new plan in to have those first four read by Easter. We’ll see.

So Issue #12 returns to a number of different fun ideas. The cover: It’s a paperback, but you can manipulate the front and back covers to make a very cool 3-D effect (by looking through two eyeholes) with a hippo. The colophon/editor’s note is also back. Someone had complained that he missed the small print ramble in the beginning of the book and so it is back, with the writer (Eggers? Horowitz?) sitting in Wales, in a B&B, and hating it. It’s very funny and a welcome return.

As the title suggests, all of the stories here are from unpublished authors. They debate about what exactly unpublished means, and come down on the side of not well known. And so that’s what we have here, first time (for the mos part) stories. And Roddy Doyle.

There are some other interesting things in this issue. The pages come in four colors–each for a different section. The Letters/Intro page [white], the main stories [pink], the Roddy Doyle piece (he’s not unpublished after all so he gets his own section) [gray] and the twenty minute stories [yellow]. There’s also photographs (with captions) of Yuri Gagarin. And a series of drawing that introduce each story called “Dancewriting”–a stick figure on a five-lined staff. They’re interesting but hard to fathom fully.

SOUNDTRACK: SWANS-Live at All Tomorrow’s Parties, October 2, 2011 (2011).

Before Swans released this year’s amazing The Seer, they toured supporting their previous album (with a number of songs from The Seer included). This set has two songs from The Seer, “The Apostate” and “The Seer, Pt 1” together they comprise 50 minutes of the nearly two hour show. The set also includes “No Words No Thoughts” (24 minutes) and “Jim” (a teeny 6 minutes) from 2010’s My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky. The final track is an eleven minute version of “I Crawled” which goes all the way back to 1984’s Young God EP.

I would never have thought of Swans as a jam band, and yet here they are, with 5 songs in 2 hours. Although unlike jam bands, they aren’t showing off their musical chops or noodling solos, they are created expressive and moody soundscapes–not as scary as in days of old, but very intense nonetheless.

The set sounds great, although I imagine this would be more enjoyable to watch than to listen to (there a great swaths of music where there’ s not a lot happening). I wonder what Gira is doing during these stretches. My friend Phil (or Phillipe Puleo as Gira calls him here) plays drums on the album and on this tour, and I have to say he must be exhausted–man he hits the drums hard.

I listened to this show before I heard The Seer, but it didn’t prepare me for what the album would contain. Now having heard that album, I appreciate this live show even more–they really master these long songs. I am going to have to try to see them the next time they swing by. I admit I used to be afraid at the thought of seeing them because their early music was so intense, but this seems to be a different Swans now, one that an old man like myself could even handle.

The set is no longer available on NPR.

[READ: December 10, 2012] McSweeney’s #41

The cover of this issue has a series of overlapping photographs of lightning. I didn’t really look at it that closely at first and thought it was an interesting collage. Indeed, Sarah said it looked like a science textbook of some kind. But when I read the colophon, I learned that Cassandra C. Jones finds photographs of lightning and (without manipulating them digitally) places them together so that the lightning bolts create shapes. And indeed, that is what is going on. And it’s amazing!

The cover’s pictures create a greyhound running (front and back covers show different stages of the run). There’s also circles and a rabbit running. It’s incredibly creative and very cool. You can see some of her work at her site.

The feature of this issue is that there are four stories from Australian Aboriginal Writers, a group that I can honestly say I have never read anything from before. There’s also beautiful art work accompanying most of the longer stories, three gritty non-fiction pieces and some letters, most of which aren’t very silly at all.